Fracture
by Indignant Lemur
Summary: Five times Gunnar fell off the wagon and the one time he didn't. WARNING: Bits of violence, coarse language, and mature subject matter. Deals with character's drug use.
1. One

Title: Fracture

During the movie, Barney tells Gunnar that he can't trust Gunnar now that he's "using again" -implying he'd used before and that he'd stopped before. It made me wonder just how many times that cycle had repeated itself, and I came up with this.

* * *

><p><strong>ONE<strong>:

The psychiatrist had started off okay, Barney Ross remembered vaguely. Gunnar had stopped using –it had shown in the twitch of his hands- and had made an honest effort to sort himself out. Hadn't talked much about it –fair enough- but had mumbled indistinctly about trauma and coping mechanisms.

Pretty much the same bucket load of issues as everyone else, he'd thought. They'd all thought it, really. Sometimes, when all that stuff –all those things that they saw and did and _didn't_ do- crept up on you, kept you up at night, kept you at the bar when every rational part of you told you to just_ go home_... Everyone did stupid shit when that happened. He did, Christmas did, Yang and Toll Road and Hale Caesar did... they all did, at some point or another.

Problem was, it was only supposed to happen once –maybe twice- and then that was it. The mind unscrambled itself and the hangover kicked in, and the rational, sensible side took over again. That was okay. That was normal. Even normal civvies messed themselves up like that, sometimes, when their issues got too big and too hard to beat.

The thing about the Expendables was that they were supposed to _bounce back_.

... But Gunnar didn't.

Well, he _did_, at first. He bounced back with a couple of drinks and maybe a pissing contest or two –par for the course with this lot of his, Barney acknowledged- but then whatever part of Gunnar's mind that kept him bouncing back better than before... it just broke.

Like when a bad engine breaks down in the middle of fucking nowhere and there's nothing around you for miles but sand and dirt and flies.

Maybe that's what it was like for the giant Swede –nothing but a goddamn wasteland wherever he looked.

Maybe that's what it's like for all of them.

But Gunnar broke, and not one of them had a clue how, or why, or what from. In the end, it didn't matter. There was always something. Some kid got killed in front of him, maybe, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or a woman, like it was with Tool, up and died in some senseless way that shouldn't have meant anything but rattled him like it meant everything. Or maybe it was some self-loathing, some bone-deep sense of worthlessness, like what Toll Road never quite hid with his cauliflower ear rant and his angry, avoidant issues. Hell, it could have been a woman –wife, girlfriend, whatever- like Christmas.

Whatever it was, it climbed up over that mountain of all the crazy, horrible things that had ever happened to him –to any of them- and broke him like so much glass.

Yeah, Barney remembered, the psychiatrist had started off okay –a slow, but steady approach- but then Gunnar went and fell off the wagon.

A relapse.

It was the money problems that had done it, that time –that much, Barney knew- but Gunnar's solution only made it worse and worse and worse.

But he never asked for money, not from any of them. Not ever. Too proud. Too stubborn.

Too goddamn mulish to ever ask for help.

But the psychiatrist had started off okay –and that meant that maybe, just _maybe_, there was hope.


	2. Two

**TWO**:

The second time around was with a therapist –some Dr. James guy with more degrees than he could fit on the walls of his office.

Lee Christmas remembered because it had been a complete fucking catastrophe.

The therapist had lasted two weeks. That's it –just two bloody weeks- before he'd pissed the mad Swede off. Something about hypnotherapy, the blade-specialist fuzzily recalled, and it had triggered some sort of episode.

Nothing short of a miracle that the quack hadn't pressed charges for assault, as far as Christmas was concerned. It was his own damn fault, really. What kind of moron put a hired gun under hypnosis and told the six-foot-five Swedish Murder Machine to 'let it all out'? Stupid prat.

Half of those degrees were probably forged.

Needless to say, Gunnar fell off the wagon again –and he fell _hard_. He disappeared for a couple of weeks –didn't answer his phone, didn't answer the door- and when he finally did condescend to show up, he was riding the tail end of crack-high. Ross pitched a fit, almost, but they others stayed out of it, mostly. Gunnar falling off the wagon like that, it made them wonder. It made them all stop and think, 'What if that's what I have to look forward to when the Life gets to me, too?' Give them crossfire and fucking disasters any day –just not that. Anything but that bleak picture of a dark tunnel with nothing but a train at the end.

There had to be something else –some better outcome- than that. For them. For Gunnar. For all that Gigantor was an belligerent, strung out prat, he was still one of them, and Expendables didn't leave each other behind.

Not if they could help it.


	3. Three

**THREE:**

The third time, Gunnar tried group therapy. Made sense, Hale Caesar figured. The last two doctors had been less than useless.

To his credit, the big guy had hung in there for a while –three months, actually. They'd all thought that Gunnar had finally pulled himself together; he was as solid and reliable as he had been before the drugs on missions, even.

But, then, Gunnar had always had a temper, and some hipster punk who only went to the meetings because his mommy drove him made a snarky comment... well, that didn't go over so well. In fact, the whole thing ended pretty badly. It didn't look good –a mercenary with an assault charge on his record. Didn't matter that the charges had been dropped (Barney had friends both high and low) or that the Swede had immediately found another group therapy gig; the black mark was still there, and it pissed everyone off.

A readily visible criminal record kind of fucked up their clientele, see.

The second therapy group lasted about a month –and four months' sobriety wasn't nothing- but then Gunnar went and messed himself up again. A mission had gone screwy –the first Gunnar had been on in a while- and the sniper had gotten shot up and beat up.

Okay, fine –that happened to all of them, after all- but painkillers never really worked on their resident Hulk like they did on normal-sized people, and it wasn't long until Gunnar had found _alternate_ means of dealing with the pain.

True, the Swede had kept it on the down-low, mostly. Had restricted himself and only used before or after missions, never during. The whole thing went unnoticed until they'd gotten together to pick and choose over some possible jobs (all boring, vanilla shit –not none of it worth their time or ammo) and saw that his pupils were the size of dinner plates.

Barney hadn't bothered to pitch a fit or take Gunnar aside, if Caesar remembered right. He'd just looked _disappointed_, like Gunnar had kicked his fucking puppy or something.

In hindsight, the weapons specialist thought ironically, that had probably made things worse.


	4. Four

**FOUR**:

Round four was as short-lived as the hypnotherapist; a skittish sponsor who didn't like loud noises. Yin Yang hadn't liked him much –some Harris guy with fish-lips and love of all things politically correct. Yang would have wondered what Gunnar was thinking, bringing a political nut over to Tool's when they were all together –but the short Asian quickly realized that the Swede wasn't doing anything nearly so cerebral.

Fish-Lips Harris had been _assigned_ to Gunnar. Apparently, every other sponsor thought the giant of a man was absolutely terrifying, and Harris had drawn the short-straw.

They'd figured hey, so it was a bad start -it could still turn out, right?

Not so much, actually.

Gunnar had learned to check his temper –after the assault charge, after the hypnotherapist- but that didn't stop the junkie from deliberately scaring Fish-Lips off. Half the time it was a joke –mostly. It didn't take much. Fish-Lips hadn't liked it much when they'd joined in, at the very beginning, as a sort of welcome- temporarily-to-the-group thing; a little harmless ball-busting to make the new guy feel sort-of at home.

Extremely temporarily, that is. No one wanted him around permanently. The guy was just _sad_, jumping whenever a motorcycle backfired, like it was a bullet or worse.

Yang's hypothetical wife could have kicked his ass with a blindfold on and one arm tied behind her back.

Even Tool didn't like Harris –and that said something. Tool could find a use for just about anyone.

But running Fish-Lips off had been a bad idea, they'd later realized. It had messed up Gunnar's "support" system–undermining the mentor and all that.

Gunnar didn't fall off the wagon so much as step off, that time.


End file.
